I recap Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s gems of wisdom from Berkshire Hathaway 2023.
There are three shareholder questions and answers I discuss as I continue my key takeaways from this year’s Berkshire meeting.
One headline that should impress people is how Buffett believes Berkshire should have a market cap of $1.5 Trillion in about 12 to 15 years, which implies a 7% growth rate in 12 years! 2035 can’t come soon enough!
Buffett said this because he doesn’t think any corporate raider or activist would be able to take over Berkshire. He said, “now if we don’t pay any dividends in 12 or 15 years, you’re talking a trillion and a half that it would take to take over.”
Buffett continued, “I think that the important thing is that Berkshire be regarded as a national asset rather than a national liability. We’ve got to be a plus to the country with our form of operation. And we certainly have got a record which will then be 12 or 15 years longer, done with much more capital, more companies.”
“More things will have happened where our hundreds of billions can work its way into the economy in terms of lots of jobs, lots of products, lots of behavior. And it can be compared with other things. So, I think we win out if we deserve to win out. And I think the odds of that happening are very, very, very high.”
The main reason why Berkshire won’t be taken over is because they’ve “got a shareholder base like nobody has,” and an ingrained owner-mindset culture that Buffett and Munger have built for over 58 years.
On another question, Buffett remarked about how we’re seeing a rise in “tribalism,” so “we have to refine in a certain way our democracy as we go along. We deal with the world we live in. But if I still had a choice of any place to be born in the world, I’d want to be born in the United States.” It reminds me of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Born in the USA,” which is still a good thing to be or end up in the USA if you can.
In a long-winded question related to estate planning and parents’ failure to create and explain wills to their children, Buffett said “in my family, I do not sign a will until my three children have read it, understand it, and made suggestions.”
Without a doubt, it’s super important to prepare the next generation of lucky babies still being born in America.
If you’re interested in learning how to take control of your finances and start becoming an investor like Warren Buffett, check out my free PDF guide.
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